Nakhane is a lot of things — but not a pop star – The Mail & Guardian

Killing it: Multimedia artist Nakhane has excelled in a range of creative activities, including music, acting, novel writing and directing a short film

This week, Nakhane launched the music video for Killer 25, his bold rendition of the classic Adamski and Seal song first released in 1990. 

While the song was introduced under Adamski’s name, Seal’s distinctive vocals and introspective lyrics helped make it a defining anthem for the early Nineties British rave and house scene.

Touching on themes of breaking free from societal constraints, personal struggles and the need for authenticity, Killer contains ideas that have resonated with listeners across different generations, geographies and backgrounds. 

The famous line “It’s the loneliness that’s the killer” speaks to the isolation and emotional disconnection relatable to many.

Its success led to the launch of Seal’s solo career. He later re-recorded Killer for his 1991 debut album but it was George Michael’s 1993 cover of the song that first inspired the young Nakhane.

“I’m so happy it’s finally out  because, just on my phone, I have 36 versions of the song,” Nakhane says during a Zoom call, speaking from London, their home of seven years.

The title is a nod to Michael, who named his 1990-released hit song Freedom 90. In this way, Nakhane’s version of Killer honours Michael, along with Adamski and Seal. 

The release has been a long time coming, as Nakhane has been performing their version of the song for six years, but it was only last year that they began to work in earnest on a recorded version.

So, why now?

“The fact that I finished it,” says Nakhane. “I mean, that’s a joke, but I’m also being dead serious. 

“In my younger years, I used to believe that I had to write a song and finish it the moment that I got the inspiration for it. But then, with my last album, I allowed myself to write a verse and then leave it, then come back to it the next day and write a chorus — to take my time.

“Also, because with that album I chose to be a co-producer on every song, I realised that this was something that I had been doing anyway, but wasn’t being credited for. 

“So, while I was writing, I was also producing, and that takes time. But Killer 25 was the first song that I felt, like, ‘Okay, let me stick my neck out here and be a producer,’ you know? 

“And that’s something that I’ve been really enjoying and learning a lot from along the way.”

Nakhane has been a captivating figure in South African music for over a decade, dating back to the 2013 release of their first album Brave Confusion. Since then they’ve released two more — You Will Not Die and Bastard Jargon — but they’ve also done much more, branching into acting, writing and film-making.

From their 2015 debut as an author with the novel Piggy Boy Blues to their first film role in the 2017 drama Inxeba (The Wound), to last year’s appearance in the theatrical production The Seeker in London, Nakhane has bravely explored multiple areas of creative expression.

One of the biggest moments of their early career was when they featured on the Black Coffee hit We Dance Again, which became a massive hit locally and internationally. But during our conversation, Nakhane brings it up as one of many moments when people tried to put them in a box.

“When that song came out, everyone assumed that I would just make house music now,” they say. 

“And I was, like, ‘No, I’m going to make whatever I’m inspired to make.’ God knows what that is. But I follow the muse and some people don’t necessarily like where the muse is telling me to go. 

“But then the thing I create is there forever, hopefully, and whoever is going to discover it in 10, 20, 30 years’ time, it’s there for them.”

In the past few years, the muse has told Nakhane to go in the direction of film-making and the result is his directorial debut, B(l)ind the Sacrifice, an evocative short film that explores the themes of religious tension and social isolation that have been so influential to their music.

It has received critical acclaim and premiered at several international festivals, including the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, the Stockholm Film Festival in Sweden and, most recently, the Sundance Film Festival in the US. 

During our interview, Nakhane is tight-lipped on the date but says that B(l)ind the Sacrifice will make its homecoming to SA this year.

Nakhane also composed the music for the film and they’re not slowing down their output anytime soon. They tell me they’re planning to release more singles this year and are working on two albums, a novel and two feature films. 

Foregoing the endless slashes that would need to be included in their title if they listed all their creative roles, Nakhane simply calls themselves a multimedia artist: “I call myself a multimedia artist because that could be anything,” they explain. 

“The public’s very eager to put artists in a box. And by calling myself a multimedia artist, it means they can’t because I said I was playing in different media from the beginning. So, if I come out saying I’m a painter tomorrow, no one will go, ‘Since when?’ Multimedia is infinite. That can be anything.”

One title Nakhane wants nothing to do with is that of pop star. In fact, they describe trying to be one as the biggest failure of their career.

“I listened to bad advice and tried to play a pop star role but it just didn’t fit,” they say. “It was just a step back. So, quite quickly, I was, like, ‘I’m not good at this. And why am I doing this?’ None of this feels good. And it’s not working, you know? 

“And I feel like the people who love me and know me could see that it didn’t work but the people who wanted to make money from my music kept telling me it was right.

‘I didn’t like the cultivating of a personality, the shaving off of the rough edges and the making everything easier to consume. And that made me reconsider. 

“I was, like, ‘Whoa, okay, what lesson are we learning here?’ And I think I learned the lesson that you don’t just wake up and become a pop star. It’s work and it’s worked at. I just don’t have the disposition for it.”

One aspect of being a pop star that made Nakhane uncomfortable was the idea of trying to be universal, a concept they reject outright.

“I hate that word because in this world ‘universal’ usually means proximity to whiteness,” they say. 

“Whenever I hear someone say, ‘Ah, this is universal,’ it normally means it’s accepted from a Western perspective because no one says that Miriam Makeba is universal or that Chinua Achebe is universal. But everyone says William Shakespeare and F Scott Fitzgerald are universal.”

“Baba Zakes Mda doesn’t get to be universal. He’s so provincial, right? I think that’s exactly what I want to be. That specificity and provinciality are so important. 

“A lot of the good Western writers were incredibly provincial and specific. James Joyce is so specific, so provincial, so Irish, you know, so Dublin. You have to put yourself in that world. 

“So if I, as a black South African from Alice in the rural areas, can put myself in that world and understand it and understand those characters, why is it so difficult for the opposite?”

“Actually, specificity and provinciality are the only things I can say are universal because then you go, ‘Oh, wow, we’re not so different after all.’ Yeah, sure, there are certain cultural things that are not the same as mine but human beings are human beings, no matter where in the world you find them.”

Perhaps that’s the thread that runs through all Nakhane’s creative endeavours — the specificity of being a queer black boy who grew up in a small rural town in the Eastern Cape and had to overcome a barrage of resistance for the right simply to be who they were always born to be. 

Their artistic fingerprint is a kind of fearless self-possession that makes you want to joyously embrace your identity, in all its contradictions, even if demanding the space to do so is sometimes painful. It’s for this reason Nakhane’s art, in all the different forms it takes, is a blessing.